On our last night in Tokyo, my wife and I decided to head back down to Golden Gai, this little area in Shinjuku famous for its alley-like walkways and tiny-ass bars. We wanted to see if we could find the bar we'd been at on our first night. The lanky young bartender had told us that the bar was owned by a movie director/actor — he pointed a thumb at this movie poster on the wall behind the bar and said, "This him."
When we arrived that first night at 8:30 or 9, which is early in Golden Gai even for a Monday, an Asian couple, about 30, was sitting on tiny stools at the back end of the bar. The space was L-shaped, with armchairs squeezed around a little coffee table, but we decided it would be unfriendly of us if we didn't sit at the bar.
We ordered two Kirins, Japan's most popular beer, and while the barman peeled the caps off two bottles and emptied them into glasses, I eyed the bottles of sake lined up on the counter. One clear glass bottle with no label contained two dead pit vipers, the Okinawa habu, coiled up in a honey-colored liquid, their fangs open.
"Snake sake," the guy said after I'd picked up the bottle to get a closer look. I could feel the other couple watching.
"Is it good?" I asked.
"Yes, good for the blood. They say it make the man hot and the woman cold."
Intrigued, I ordered a shot. "You want one?" I asked Ro.
"No, I'll just watch what happens."
The guy placed a large shot glass in front of me filled to the brim with golden sake. I lifted it, eyed it, then downed it. It was surprisingly sweet, syrupy, and smooth.
"How is it?" the Asian girl said in clear English. By her look and the sound of her voice she seemed like the fun-loving professional type.
"It's actually pretty good," I said.
I got Ro and the other couple to take a shot with me, inviting the bartender to join us, and Ro and the other couple agreed that the snake sake didn't taste nearly as bad as it looked in the bottle.
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Ro and I were on our second bottles of Kirin and chatting with the Asian couple — who turned out to be from Malaysia — when two young girls, one brown, the other pale Asian, came in and sat at the bar. They both looked worried, the Asian girl more so than her friend. The Asian girl, who was from Hong Kong, had lost her hotel keycard and was worried that (1) she wouldn't be able to get into her room (though couldn't she just ask the front desk for another one?) and (2) someone might find the keycard and enter her room at night while she was sleeping. The girls asked the bartender if he could call the Hongkonger's hotel and explain the situation.
The bartender, who up till then had been super friendly, talkative, and smiley for nearly an hour, immediately became standoffish when the girl from Hong Kong, who with her small, soft features looked so innocent and scared, even childlike, asked him to make the call. The sudden switch in his demeanor was so palpable that it chilled the tiny room like a blast of air from the cold alley outside.
Thinking about it afterward as we walked back to our hotel, Ro and I concluded that his friendly attitude had all been an act, and that he, as a Japanese, must've had some hardwired animosity toward Chinese people. Maybe he just resented having to do such a favor for a stranger, and/or resented the two girls for abruptly interrupting the flowing conversation and convivial atmosphere of the preceding hour — because once the girls came in, the other couple left, and the bartender didn't say one word (except when he made the call) till Ro and I left an hour later.
The other girl said she was from Frankfurt, Germany, and judging by her dark hair and complexion, I figured she was of Arab descent. She spoke perfect English too, with even an almost Midwestern accent, which she chalked up to her stepdad being an American. The two girls had just met each other in Tokyo a few days earlier, though we never fully understood exactly how they met and why they weren't with the friends they'd traveled with. That their story was vague — the Chinese girl had gotten separated from her group somehow — and that the German girl seemed very streetwise and way beyond her 23 years — she maintained eye contact and had a cool and easy way of talking like she knew you — kept me on guard. The Chinese girl, though, seemed incapable of putting on an act and appeared to be the real deal.
When we told her that we were from Las Vegas, she said, "Oh wow!" I can't remember exactly what she said about the United States, only that she seemed to be one of those outsiders who still believe that America's streets are paved with gold and that everyone here is ecstatic and living in the future. I told her that things weren't so good in America these days — with a growing homeless population and kids being murdered in their classrooms, just to name two crises — and the Hongkonger, with the same awestruck look on her face, said "Oh really?" You would've thought I told her Goofy mouth-raped kids in the Disney castle.
But the German girl knew all about it. Relaying what she'd heard from her stepdad and stuff she'd seen and read, she described the United States as a rich and powerful empire on the brink of collapse — the dragon eating its tail, yet again. She knew about Trump and MAGA, about our fierce political divide, about the cops killing Black people, about the war on women's rights. She rattled through all this and more with the half-lidded nonchalance of a young punk who sneers when things go to shit.
Trying to find the same bar on our last night, my wife and I strolled up and down the alleys of Golden Gai, the neon signs of each bar lighting the way, their doors opened outward not only to welcome passersby but out of necessity, space-wise. (Some bars in Golden Gai are strictly Japanese-only, and these are typically identified by the lack of English words on their sandwich boards and other signage.) We peered into each bar as we walked by. The bars were no bigger than a large RV, and inside each one, men and women, many in business clothes, were either talking or laughing quietly in the cramped space (rowdiness is strictly prohibited in Golden Gai) while music softly played. Each bar played its own genre of music and had its own vibe, and it was the music and vibe at the bar on our first night that lured us back.
Golden Gai is only six alleys, each 100 feet long, but the bars are so small and crammed together that we didn't find the bar till our second or third pass. This time there were two Japanese men hunched over the bar just inside the door, and we had to squeeze past them once inside. This time, too, instead of the lanky guy there was a middle-aged lady behind the bar with closely cropped hair, piercings on her ears and eyebrow, tattoos on her sleeveless arms (in December), and a hard cynical look on her face. And this time Ro and I sat in the battered armchairs around the little table.
There was another Japanese man, about 30 and wearing a suit, the collar and tie undone, sitting alone at the bar and slumped over a bottle of Kirin. He greeted us in English and told us he was in commercial real estate. “I’m nobody” is how he described his position at his company. He'd been born in Tacoma, Washington but raised in Japan since he was a baby. Then, at the age of 15, his parents moved the family to upstate New York — his dad did something in tech. “John,” as he introduced himself, said he'd gone to college in Maryland for a bit before moving back to Japan and settling among the intense lights and sketchy prowlers of Shinjuku, his favorite part of town.
We'd already known about the bar's showbiz owner, but it was John who told us that the bar was a favorite late-night hangout for actors, filmmakers and artists of all kinds. He pointed at the older man with gray in his hair and beard sitting three seats down. The man was speaking Japanese in a low tone with the much younger guy next to him. “He is a director,” John told us. Then he pointed to the younger guy. “And he’s cameraman, I think.” Ro and I nodded and were genuinely impressed. “People come here to drink and talk about art and politics — you know . . . big ideas. That’s why I like to come here after work.”
“Do you live close by?” Ro asked.“Yes,” he said, pointing vaguely. “I walk here.”
He asked us if we had explored nearby Kabukichō, Tokyo’s infamous entertainment district. I said it reminded me of Times Square but on steroids and cocaine. He nodded and asked if we had noticed all the half-naked girls standing outside the so-called “hostess clubs,” beckoning potential patrons like Homer’s sirens. I thought he wanted to engage me in some locker-room talk, so I responded with something mildly lewd, harmless enough that my wife didn’t mind me saying it. But John didn’t so much as crack a smile.
“A lot of them are country girls,” he said solemnly, like a drunk at the end of his rope. “Rural, you know. Very young . . . They come to Tokyo, to Shinjuku, and they don’t know anything. And the men take advantage of them. They invite the girls to drink and party, and then they tell them they have to pay. But the girls don’t have money to pay, so the men make them work, to pay what they owe.”
The bar was so tiny that you could hardly whisper without everyone in the place catching every syllable. I glanced toward the bartender who was drying a glass with a towel. She nodded at me, looking heartbroken.
I ordered another round of Kirin as John talked about the widening income and wealth disparities seizing Japan. He said it’d been going on for a long time. I knew as much from reading Jonathan Clements’s breezy history of Japan, which explains how the islands have been suffering through an economic crisis for at least the past decade, made worse by a series of natural disasters and an aging population. Entire areas of Japan have been abandoned, especially since the tsunami in 2011, which left virtual ghost towns in its wake.
“Japan is falling apart,” John said.
“Sounds like America,” I said, recalling how the girl from Hong Kong had looked shocked to hear that America wasn’t as it seemed to her from afar.
I ordered a round of snake sake, the other reason we had returned to this particular bar. The level of the sake didn't appear to have lowered an inch, the two vipers still coiled up inside with their mouths open. The bartender poured herself a shot too and lifted her glass.“To Japan,” I said.“Kampai,” she and John said.
With the filmmakers now gone, the bartender joined our conversation about the state of her country and its people. Her attitude and facial expressions reminded me of a Japanese Margaret Cho, only with something dangerous about her. This lady had clearly seen some shit or been through some shit, and it would not have surprised me if she carried a large blade on her and had used it once or twice. Still, beneath her prickly exterior I sensed a decent person with a kind heart and an open mind.
So when she asked me what was taught in American schools about the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki at the end of World War II, I took the question as coming from a place of genuine curiosity, and I answered her honestly. “Well,” I said, “most kids learn that America had to do it. That if America invaded Japan, a million people would’ve died. Because the Japanese would never surrender their homeland.”“That’s true,” she said bluntly.“And they teach that Japan was warned ahead of time.”“Yup." She kept her eyes closed as she nodded.
“That America detonated a bomb before and said, Surrender or we’re gonna drop this on you. But the emperor wouldn’t listen.”
“That’s true.” I thought she was gonna say more, but there was nothing else.
So then I said, “There’s also this conspiracy theory, that the president, Roosevelt, knew the Japanese were going to attack Pearl Harbor” — the bartender was nodding with her eyes closed — “but that he let it happen so that the United States would enter the war.”
“Yup,” she said.
I ordered another beer, and while she served me I asked, “Lemme ask you, when was Japan’s golden age?”
She gave me a questioning look.
“Like, when was the best time in Japan?” I said.“Edo period," she said matter-of-factly.
“Edo period?”
She nodded.
“Under the Tokugawa?” I was showing off some of the Japanese history I'd just picked up.
“Yes, exactly. Before Meiji.”
“Really, before the Meiji Restoration?”
She nodded with her eyes closed but this time had her hands on her hips and her head slightly raised, like she was daring anyone to challenge her assertion.
“Because in America they teach us that the Meiji Restoration brought Japan out of feudalism and into the modern area,” I explained. “Made it strong, militarily and economically.”
“Yeah but before Meiji, Japan had its own culture. Not trying to be like the West.”
Not trying to be like the West . . . The words hit me like a torpedo, exploding my view of the world; from the crater, sprang a new awareness. Yes, it was true that during the Meiji Restoration, a period in which the Japanese came under increasing foreign influence, mostly American, Japan experienced rapid industrialization and saw its military might go from laughable in 1853 when Commodore Perry forced his "black ships" into Edo Bay, to whooping the Russian navy in 1905. But Japan had lost something in the process — according to this bartender, it had lost itself.
Everybody knows or at least sees Japan as this hypermodern, super advanced futuristic place — you hear it said that Japan is living 20 years ahead of the rest of the world. For the most part it's true, though I saw things in Taipei that made Tokyo look a bit outdated (both cities are a jarring fusion of the ancient and the state-of-the-art). But as shiny and new as much of Tokyo is on its surface, traditional Japanese culture — the spirit of Japan — values outer appearances insofar as they reflect inner states and universal truths. Whereas a cherry blossom, they say, is beautiful not only because it looks beautiful, but because its looks are fleeting, a cracked teacup is just as beautiful because of its imperfection.
Despite what the onna-musha bartender told me about Japan no longer having its own culture, Ro and I saw plenty of it wherever we went. We saw it at the Lumine mall, where the saleswoman handed Ro her receipt as if it were printed on gold leaf — we saw this kind of ceremonial handover everywhere — and then she politely escorted us to the edge of her department and bowed as though we were royalty. We saw Japan's culture in the way another saleswoman at the same mall gift-wrapped our purchase fast but with great care, precision, and grace. It was practically acrobatic.
Conspicuous too was the absence of any public trash cans, though the streets, parks and other public areas were immaculate. That's because, in Japan, it's considered rude to eat on the go as nearly everyone else in the world does — I can't count the number of times I or somebody I was with said, "Let's walk and eat." Our custom of eating and moving is why we invented Hot Pockets, the walking taco, and (what Ro and I didn't see in Tokyo) sushi burritos.
(By the way, the impoliteness of eating and walking in Japan comes from the post-war days, when food was scarce and thus meant to be savored. The popularity of ramen began in the same period, as rice was a luxury but the U.S. occupiers pumped Japan with wheat for bread and noodles.)
That said, Tokyo is crawling with foreigners, and most Japanese in the service and retail industries we met knew working English, though every exchange still began with the obligatory "Konnichiwa!" and ended with "Arigato gozaimasu!" The fancier parts of the city, namely Shibuya and Ginza, looked and felt a lot like Manhattan or the Chicago Loop. And even a young uncultured American shouldn't feel too out of place browsing the shops along Takeshita Street in Harajuku, once they get past the Japanese punk music blaring from speakers and the girls dressed as slutty mythological creatures.
Maybe that's what the bartender meant when she said Japan had lost its once distinct culture. But isn't that happening everywhere? They're drinking Starbucks in tea-sipping China, and Mexican food is now the most popular cuisine in the apple pie-eating United States. Such changes are not only inevitable but necessary if human beings are to create a single planetary civilization, as the renowned physicist and futurologist Michio Kaku — the American-born grandson of four Japanese immigrants — says we must if we're going to survive as a species. (Speaking of unity, it should be noted that Kaku's California-born parents were both sent to the concentration camp at Tule Lake during World War II, along with nearly 30,000 other people of Japanese descent, two-thirds of whom were U.S. citizens — but we don't talk much about that in this country).
As it happens, before we left Tokyo, Ro and I got tattooed (my first, her second) at Three Tides in Harajuku. Our tattooist looked fresh out of high school and spoke no English (at least not to us); he had full sleeves, his left arm completely black with ink, and spindly, fungi-like tattoos creeping across his cheeks from under his Supreme skullcap. We got matching tattoos on the inner left forearm.
Now I'm planning for at least two more. The first, 𒂼𒄄, is a Sumerian word believed to be the oldest written reference to freedom. The other, 物の哀れ, is a complicated Japanese concept that can best be summed up as: "Nothing lasts forever."
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